Uganda has played down any suggestions that the Kenyan government plans to construct its route of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) that will be terminated at Kisumu, which is about 139 kilometres from the Kenya-Uganda border town of Malaba. According to The East African newspaper, Kenya’s transport cabinet secretary James Macharia acknowledged that extension of the line to Malaba may no longer be necessary if landlocked states opted out. “The decision has not been reached but we have a number of options at our disposal. We can decide to end the SGR at Naivasha or Kisumu but it will still be a viable venture due to the presence of Lake Victoria,” said Mr Macharia. The SGR Uganda project coordinator, Mr Kasingye Kyamugambi has refuted the claims and said the three countries – Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda – were still committed to the route. “I think the protocol is clear between the countries and anything that’s outside the protocol must also come through the Northern Corridor Integration Project (NCIP) summit that we use as a fall back arm to know if we are together or not and that is really the presidents’ forum,” he told Daily Monitor during a tour to assess land acquisition in Tororo District on Wednesday. The ping-pong Rwanda last week, announced plans to build a railway through Tanzania to the Indian Ocean noting that the route is cheaper and would take a shorter time to complete. This is according to The East African. The Northern Corridor Infrastructure...

Kampala. The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is set to unveil strategies of creating 25 million jobs for young people over the 10 years in its member states. The strategies are contained in the group’s new agenda for the continent’s economic transformation that are to be revealed at this year’s annual meetings scheduled to take place from May 23 to 27 in Lusaka, Zambia. Unemployment in sub Saharan/African continent as a whole has an estimated 11 million young Africans expected to join the labour market every year for the next decade (World Bank data). Therefore, creating millions of productive, well-paying jobs will be vital to boost economic growth to significantly cut poverty, and create shared prosperity in Africa. In an annual meetings preview video message, the president AfDB, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said participants will examine burning issues in Africa and focus on the bank’s five new priority areas, (High 5s), designed to scale up its operations for the continent’s transformation. These High 5s are: Light up and power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialise Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. “Each of those is high on the agenda in Lusaka,” Dr Adesina said, noting that three of them will take a major leap forward as the bank unveils new strategies, and a programme to create 25 million jobs for young people over the next decade. “All of them need to be debated and owned, as much by governments, as by business, as by civil...

Rwanda has denied that it had dropped plans to build a new railway connecting Kigali to Mombasa in favour of the Tanzania route. Rwandan Minister for Finance and Economic Planning Claver Gatete was last week quoted saying that Kigali will opt for a Tanzanian route because it will be shorter and cheaper. This prompted unease especially at a time when Uganda has opted to build a pipeline for its oil through Tanzania rather than Kenya. The executive director of Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) Donat Bagula said the Rwandan minister had been misquoted by a section of the media. “Rwanda has not pulled out of the Northern Corridor and this has been clarified in the local media following the misquoting of the minister,” said an NCTTCA communications office in a statement in response to questions asked by the Business Daily. According to The New Times, a Rwandan publication, the country is still on course to linking their railway to Mombasa. “Rwanda is not pulling out of the Kenyan railway route. What I pointed out was that the Tanzanian route is shorter and slightly cheaper compared to the Kenyan one. “To suggest that Rwanda was pulling out of one railway route in favour of the other is simply misleading,” Gatete told The New Times last week. Rwanda estimates that building the railway line along the Northern Corridor to link Mombasa will cost $ 1 billion and $800-900 million on Tanzanian route. Rwanda and other countries along the corridor...

The Kenya government has said it will directly award 17 newly demarcated blocks for the exploration of crude oil and natural gas to international prospecting companies. The Ministry of Energy said it will use a first-come, first-served basis to negotiate the production sharing agreements (PSAs) for exploration before going into competitive bidding in 2017. Uganda is expected to award the licences of six exploration blocks in the Albertine basin by the end of next month. Kenya’s Petroleum Principal Secretary Andrew Kamau said 17 new blocks have been demarcated in order to reduce acreage and accelerate the pace of seismic surveys in identifying oil and gas deposits. “Sessional Paper No 4 of 2005 on energy provides for the reduction of block sizes to curb the tendency by companies to hoard them while carrying out work on very small parts of entire acreage,” he said. Revision of blocks The first blocks were deemed too large, covering about 20,000 square kilometres. The first revision was done in 2006, when the blocks were increased from 25 to 37. The second revision was in 2013, and the number of blocks went up to 46. Mr Kamau said the PSAs for the new blocks will be signed after exploration terms are negotiated and new acreage is delineated by the Survey Department subdividing existing blocks or merging areas that have been surrendered. “Firms can retain the portion of the block deemed valuable, and surrender 25 per cent of the original contract area at or before the end of...

There was much excitement in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, in the week leading up to the convening of the World Economic Forum for Africa recently. As with past meetings of this magnitude, the government of Rwanda left nothing to chance. Its remarkable mobilisation capacity was deployed to get everyone with a role to play during the preparations to do their bit and do it well. Under normal circumstances officials and public servants here work like there is no tomorrow. It gets worse when big events that require special attention are in the offing. Contacts I was running after for bits of information about this and that and who from one to the next pleaded inability to see me, summed up what was going on. The most common response to appointment requests were, “I really can’t do anything this week.” A friend working for a major government agency wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was no use trying to set up a coffee appointment before the WEF was over, “because I am not able to think about anything else right now”. It mattered not whether I was talking to a public servant, a politician, or a member of the local business community. They were all “busy with WEF.” What on earth were they doing, I wondered. In public, there was not much activity in evidence. And there were no reports in the media about this or that critically important aspect of the preparations lagging hopelessly behind schedule. Everything seemed to be in...

Come July, exporters in East Africa will pay more, when a new requirement on weighing and verifying containers is implemented globally. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) is making verification of weights a condition for loading packed export containers aboard ships to conform to amended changes to Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention. Safety is a driver of change as each year over 135 million containers enter the global supply chain, but many lack accurate weight estimates, contributing to costly shipping accidents. The Kenya Maritime Authority (KMA) said SOLAS changes aim to curb under-declaring weight of cargo that can lead to shipwrecks, destruction of goods and pollution if hazardous cargo spills into the sea. The global rule for shippers to provide verified gross mass (VGM) for every packed container complete with correct documentation targeting enhanced safety is expected to increase cost of operations with consumers bearing the brunt. A container without VGM will not be loaded on a ship from July 1. A shipper sending goods will be responsible for proper verified weighing of packed container and documentation for cargo to be loaded on a vessel. Any container exceeding maximum gross mass will not be loaded to a ship. KMA acting director-general Cosmas Cherop said a container leaving a port will have a document signed either electronically or in hard copy by the shipper on bill of lading. Shippers will make the information available in advance to the port and the shipping line. The first method of obtaining VGM entails...

Regional inflation rates could spike in the medium term following the sustained rebound of the price of crude oil in the international market, where it has risen from a low of $29 early this year to the current $47 per barrel. Rwanda recorded a rise in its April inflation rate to 4.6 per cent, up from 4.1 per cent a month earlier, which it blamed on rising energy and transport costs. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have also recorded an increase in fuel prices in the past month. The three countries saw their inflation drop in April, with Kenya’s year-on-year inflation dropping to 5.27 per cent in April, from 6.45 per cent a month earlier. Uganda’s inflation dropped to 5.1 per cent in April from 6.2 per cent in March, while Tanzania saw its April inflation decrease to 5.1 per cent from 5.4 per cent a month earlier. Rwanda’s central bank (BNR) said the country’s inflation levels experienced pressure as a result of increased transport prices after the recovery in global oil prices. Rwanda’s monthly inflation rate rose by 0.8 per cent in April, while its food prices rose by 5.6 per cent. The annual inflation rate for housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels increased by 3.9 per cent while that for transport rose by 7.6 per cent. Last week, Rwanda’s Ministry of Trade and Industry announced an increase in the petrol pump price from Rwf826 ($1.05) to Rwf860 ($1.09) per litre, making it the highest in the region. “The...

Global trade and investment rules will top the agenda for the upcoming United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) XIV to be held in Nairobi in two months. The meeting themed “Translating Agenda 2030 Decisions into Actions”, will take place from July 17-22 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre. “This is the first Unctad conference after the adoption of Agenda 2030 and sustainable development goals in September 2015. It will, therefore, seek to operationalise the synergies that exist between various outcomes, including the 10th World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference, COP21 on Climate Change, as well as the International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa, last year,” says a brief of the agenda for the conference seen by the Nation. The forum will coincide with a world leaders’ summit, which will see Heads of State and government hold “frank exchange of views with the business leaders on the vision for investment in the context of sustainable development,” according to the note. Over 250 heads of delegation, 4,000 government delegates and 2,000 business and civil society representatives are expected to attend the multi-stakeholder conference from 194 United Nations member countries. “It is expected the conference will provide an opportunity to dialogue on the balance between trade-rule making process and investment regulations,” explains the brief. KENYA'S PROFILE Besides the trade agenda, Nairobi believes the conference will reinforce Kenya’s high profile standing within the United Nations as an active member and contributor to the international economic order. “It will cement Kenya’s position...

Innovators and entrepreneurs in the logistics and transport sector across the East African Community have a chance to acquire part of $16 million grant-based fund under the second phase of the logistics Innovation for Trade (LIFT) Challenge Fund. The TradeMark Africa initiative will provide grants ranging from $150,000 to $1 million to winning proposals from innovators across the world, whose project ideas will be implemented in East Africa. The organisation has already called for entries from qualifying sector player. The LIFT initiative is managed by Nathan Associates through a fund management team based in Nairobi, and is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). It seeks to trigger and introduce innovative approaches to tackling freight and transport costs in the East African Community (EAC). TradeMark Africa chief executive Officer Frank Matsaert urged innovators to apply for funding, saying the challenge had enabled stakeholders to test new ideas that should reduce the cost and transport time in the EAC. "It is our hope that the entrepreneurs and innovators of the East African Community in partnership with their counterparts internationally will drive forward development through the adoption or introduction of 'best practice' technologies in the transport and logistics sector, enabling local businesses to compete favourably in the increasingly global economy," said Matsaert. Businesses in the transport and logistics sector, or those that provide services to actors within it, are now being invited to submit their innovative concepts to LIFT for possible funding. The LIFT Challenge Fund is open to businesses...

Kenya’s big vision for a ‘coalition of the willing (CoW)’ agreement with Uganda and Rwanda to build a major rail line and oil pipeline that would invigorate and open up East Africa’s economy may be going up in smoke as its partners look elsewhere for more economically pragmatic paths to achieve their goals. First it was Uganda. In March, East Africa’s third largest economy pulled the plug on a tentative agreement with Kenya for an oil pipeline deal. Desperate bids to save the deal fell through as Tanzania, the new ally in Uganda’s oil pipeline deal said it would expedite the process for a lot less less than the Kenyan route had been estimated. Then Rwanda did what took both Kenya and Uganda by surprise: opting out of the standard gauge railway (SGR)with the two partners, once ‘bosom friends’. In 2013, soon after Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta ascended to power, he marshaled Uganda and Rwanda into a ‘coalition of the willing’ arrangement in which they initiated a raft of infrastructure, telecommunication, defense and tourism-promotion projects in East Africa’s Northern Corridor. The Northern Corridor links Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda and gives the two landlocked countries as well as the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan access to the sea through Kenya’s port city of Mombasa. In 2013, soon after Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta ascended to power, he marshaled Uganda and Rwanda into a ‘coalition of the willing’ arrangement in which they initiated a raft of infrastructure, telecommunication, defense and...